There is so much discussion about “subjective” and tailoring to “taste”…. And with what result? I have to admit I have my problems to follow…
…when I listen to a thunder in nature, then I “hear” it, and to my ears there is much much more than "only" "glorious mid range splendour" in a system… that much more that I would like to say that it is the bass which defines basically the reproduced sound (not that boom-boom, you get me right…)… and everybody else “hears” the thunder as well, but everybody hears it his onw way…
…the other day I watched a brand new and very interesting scientific report in brain research on tele regarding the individual human detection of colours… that everybody “sees” the colors red and green and blue and so on in his own way, and that the different “detections” simply are “not congruent” with the impressions that others have with them… that everybody has his own "impression" of what a certain color is, and that there is only a "common agreement" of that what all these "different" "blue", "red" and "green" are... and well, my feelings grow that the same might be valid for the perceptions in HiFi…
…a thunder in nature is a thunder in nature, no matter “how” a single person perceives it… everybody has his personal detection… and I do not hear anyone saying that the perception of a thunder in nature is “subjective” although the thunder is perceived highestly “subjectively”, and I never ever have read (so far) of any wish to tweak and/or taylor to taste a natural thunder…
so everybody “should” be able to “compare” his own detection of a natural thunder with that one of the reproduction within his own system and the ones within other systems, and so everybody “should” be able to detect how far he is “away” (or close to) from his subjective detection in comparison to the natural one – in case that this is the “aim” one follows in HiFi… (there are many others of course…)
at least for me there is “no taste” and “no subjectivity” in natural sound - it is as is, but very much in reproduced sound… if I like it or not…
may it be that people are not that “used” to natural sound to come to “objective” results for their own reproductions?
… to get back to the theme of this thread I find it best when ambitious DIYers present the results that they found out best for themselves and present them so that everybody may take advantage for himself or not…
..so for example supersurfer lately came out with this:
#3691
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-line-level/224108-nos-192-24-dac-pcm1794-waveio-usb-input-370.html“…For me it is more interesting to discover the beste price/improvement ratio for all these modifications.
[…]
In order of sound improvement and costs I would choose:
-direct balanced out (without capacitor)
- tantalum IV resistors
- silmic and oscon capacitors on the dac boards
-shunt regulators on the dac boards analog side
- unregulated choke power supply with a large transformer
-I2S connected raspberry pi or bbb
-acko S03 reclocker board ( or to be released botic cape from TP)
- shunt regulators on digital supplies
Pin 20 modification to be put in the above order somewhere, but I have not made this so can't judge the effect…”
I was very impressed with supersurfer's results so far last april here with us, and they are definitely well worth following and being checked out by others who are interested in…
...as I am not a technician I can only hope that these results may encourage you to push your own ambitions - with whatever DAC - further to come closer to the “natural” thunder within your system…